Fiery Hearts
by nlizzette7
Summary: "But none of that explains how she can fathom loving a boy like ice." / Scorpius x Rose, one-shot.


**A/N: **This is my first dip into the Harry Potter world, but I just couldn't get this couple off my mind. Let me know what you think!

* * *

**Fiery Hearts**

_I'm falling in, I'm falling down._

_I want to begin, but I don't know how_

_To let you know how I'm feeling._

_I'm high on hope._

_I'm reeling._

There's a lion charm against the hollow of Rose's throat, and it reminds her that she's got her mother's smarts and her father's smile, reds and browns all tangled up in her hair, a cacophony of Weasleys and Grangers - but none of that explains how she can fathom loving a boy like ice.

/

She finds him first when they're young, the lightest dark she's ever seen. Scorpius Malfoy is just a flash of a spinning cloak, a list of dark spells that were never meant to be uttered, wars that broke boys – that whispered scars like lightening. The things that no one talks about – and everything she's fascinated by.

That's what Scorpius is.

"Rosie," her mother whispers, tugging her along a strip of closed shops. A broomstick shines promise behind a shuttered window, and Rose raises on her tiptoes, one hand pressed against the glass, her gaze desperate to remain on the boy in the distance.

He looks at her finally, eyes a blue so cold that she's not sure if it's the weather that's making her tremble. She smiles at him, the freckles on her cheeks a pattern of frazzled constellations. The strange boy blinks for a moment but doesn't smile back.

But that won't stop Rose from imagining he did.

/

Hearts are sorted like houses, but hers unravels and deconstructs when she taps him hard on the shoulder, barely passing over the silver hair curled against the nape of his neck.

Scorpius frowns, snarls, "Might want to sod off. I'm allergic to roses."

It's the first day of their first year, and he still looks like that little boy, unsure feet in shoes too big to fill, an unsteady spirit that he'd rather not acknowledge. Rose refuses to cry because she's her mother's daughter. But she falls a little bit harder because she's her father's, too.

Scorpius glances back when she storms away, but Rose isn't looking.

Both hearts are far too stubborn.

/

It takes time to realize that they're not exactly who they were pre-destined to be. Half-broken boys are still somewhat good through the cracks. Even the outspoken little bits undo their facades and take a moment to live life backwards.

Her hair is wild tonight, their wands blow sparks across the air in the common room, and the whole thing is so bloody intoxicating that he stumbles forward, stumbles in her general direction as she's speaking to some bloke whose grin is so sloppy that he might as well be a Muggle.

Scorpius clears his throat, eyes glistening to greet, "Weasley."

She turns, then frowns, but her blush betrays everything. It always does. Scorpius has learned that, he's learned a lot of things, from sitting two seats away in their morning Herbology lecture, from unintentionally falling headfirst into something more than magic.

Rose presses her lips together. "Got your allergies fixed, did you?"

"Saving your wit for me, are you?"

"Is he bugging you, Rosie?" The boy, Teddy, seems concerned. And Rose thinks for a moment before excusing herself, stepping away and into a shadow – there always seems to be a shadow when it comes to Scorpius.

"I know that you fancy me," Scorpius proudly claims, that mean look in his eyes dulling into midnight, warm pools of indigo as a backdrop to the gold sprinkled across his irises. Rose thinks that there's a term for that, but doesn't want to sound like a know-it-all. Not around him.

"If I ever fancied you," Rose says with the lift of her chin, "it was when I was a stupid little girl."

There's something kind in his eyes, and it looks practiced, looks practiced just for her. It makes the back of her neck burn.

"I may be allergic to flowers, _Rosie_." Scorpius grins, and it's sure this time. She crinkles her nose when his wand waves cold fire between them. "But I still think they're beautiful."

/

There's another night, one time near summer, when the muggy air finds them both broken. Rose can feel him on the other side of the closed door, the one that leads into her dorm. She closes her eyes, slides to sit on the floor.

It's one, two, three more seconds until he follows suit on his side.

"They're not my memories," Scorpius explains, voice muffled through wood, "but they're all that I am." She can imagine the cockiness, the coldness, slipping from his features, a sorrow that he doesn't understand plain on his face. He clears his throat. "I'm not sure who I'm meant to be."

She knows all about legacies and how to fail them, Rose thinks.

So it's easy when she opens the door a bit, leans against the wooden panel to reach her hand through the crack. She rests her palm against the cool carpet until his fingers scoop hers up. Rose can feel his pulse, an uneven thrum. There's a word for that, but she never says a thing.

"We can be mates," Rose allows, her voice sleepy, and his laughter is quiet. She flushes a deep red like her own name, forehead pressed against the door.

"Mates," Scorpius echoes, like the word doesn't make a lick of sense.

But she doesn't miss the telltale squeeze of her hand against his.

/

Scorpius passes the time getting Rose into trouble, and she spends hers getting him out of it.

His friends belch like it's a language, too crass for proper daylight. She's rolled her eyes more than once at having to gather his mucked-up robes after he's sick from a hangover. He teases her when she does and says that her face is going to stay that way.

There are other times, though. She studies for hours in the library until Scorpius forces her outside, but even then, she reads to him aloud, his head on her knee, his silver hair caught up in her fingertips, and he pretends to be bored, but she knows better.

Sometimes he's quiet when he plays with the lion charm against the hollow of her throat, a reminder that the worst wars can bloom from a love just like this.

/

It's a funny thing, really, how two wizards can be so naïve as to how easily some spells are broken.

"You're afraid of what they'll say," Rose realizes. She's wearing a nightgown down to her toes, ivory light against her thin body, a tangled mess of red against her cheeks. "Well, I'm not going to be your secret _pal _anymore."

Scorpius glances into the forbidden woods, paints himself a coward because it's easier this way. "You're going to be with someone good."

She scowls. "That's a bloody lie, Scorpius."

_I've fallen too hard_, Scorpius thinks.

"I haven't fallen at all," he says, unsurprised when she slaps him hard across the face.

/

The paintings on the walls sing whispers of melancholy when he passes them by. Slytherin's emblem glows a prideful green when he dons it, like maybe he's finally back on script.

But at night, he imagines the ghosts of love stories that came before, a raven-haired man who loved a woman a whole lifetime, even after hers ended.

Scorpius realizes that there's only one thing he has to be ashamed about.

/

Another year slips through the cracks.

Rose memorizes incantations, pretends not to look at him while she gossips with her friends, pulls perfect marks, and wrings out her tear-stained pillow when the morning comes.

Scorpius memorizes her, is shameless as he stares at the back of her head, dreams of lion charms and green blurring into red until the story they once thought they knew is rewritten.

There's a feast near Christmas, a warm feeling that only the holidays ever allow. For once, Scorpius is caught with red skin when he taps Rose hard on the shoulder, eyes blazing with the same burn reflected in hers.

She smiles because she's always been the better one. "Want to sod off, Scorpius? I'm allergic to Malfoys."

When they kiss, her lips burn, and they don't need wands to light the spark.

/

A warm September hits years after, and they get married in a rose garden teeming with grass snakes.

It's a compromise.

_Some things truly are more than magic, after all._

fin.


End file.
